Franco. Paul Preston
the time of the ‘odio africano’ (African hatred) that had been unleashed against the mining villages, in an orgy of rape, looting, beatings and torture.71
The growing hostility of many Army officers to the existing political system was intensified in the years following 1917 by the major campaign carried out by the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (the Spanish Socialist Workers Party) against the Moroccan war and by the indecision shown by successive governments. Army officers simply wanted to be given the resources and the liberty to elaborate policy without political hindrance. Successive governments, inhibited by ever greater popular hostility to the loss of life in Morocco, reduced material support and imposed an essentially defensive strategy upon the Army. In the eyes of the military high command, the hypocritical politicians were playing a double game, demanding of the soldiers cheap victories while remaining determined not to be seen sinking resources into a colonial war.72 Accordingly, instead of proceeding to the full-scale occupation of the Rif which the military regarded as the only proper solution, the Army was obliged to keep to the limited strategy of guarding important towns and the communications between them. Inevitably, the tribal guerrillas were able to attack the supply convoys, involving the military in a seemingly interminable war of attrition which they blamed on the civilian politicians. An effort to change the trend of events was made in August 1919 when, on the death of General Gómez Jordana, the prime minister, the Conde de Romanones, named the forty-six year-old General Dámaso Berenguer as High Commissioner for the Moroccan Protectorate. A brilliant officer with an outstanding record, Berenguer had risen to be Minister of War in November 1918.73
One of the difficulties faced by Berenguer was the ambition and jealousy of the military commander of Ceuta, General Manuel Fernández Silvestre. Although they liked and respected each other, and were both favourites of Alfonso XIII, their working relationship was complicated by the fact that Silvestre was two years older than Berenguer, had once been his commanding officer and outranked him, albeit by only one number, in the seniority list. That seniority, together with Silvestre’s personal friendship with the King, fuelled his tendency towards insubordination. There were major policy differences between them, Silvestre wanting an all-out showdown with the Moroccan tribes; Berenguer inclining towards a peaceful domination of the tribes by the skilful use of indigenous forces.74 Berenguer drew up a three year plan for the pacification of the zone. It aimed at the eventual linking of Ceuta and Melilla by land. The first part envisaged the conquest of the tribal territory to the east of Ceuta, known as Anyera, including the town of Alcazarseguir. This was to be followed by the domination of the Jibala with its two major towns, Tazarut and Xauen. With government approval, the plan was initiated with the occupation of Alcazarseguir on 21 March 1919. This led El Raisuni to retaliate with a campaign of attacks on Spanish supply convoys.
At this time, Franco was sufficiently removed from events in Morocco to have joined the Juntas de Defensa despite the fact that they advocated promotion by rigid seniority. It may be supposed that he did so without conviction and in response to the jealousy of junior officers, much older than himself, who had not served in Africa. After all, the Juntas’ policy, if generally applied, would remove the major incentive for officers to volunteer to serve in Morocco. Before Franco could get too involved in the concerns of the Peninsular Army, seeds of dramatic changes in his existence and in his future prospects had been sown on 28 September 1918, when he travelled from his unit in Oviedo to Valdemoro near Madrid. He remained there until 16 November taking part in an obligatory marksmanship course for majors. There he met Major José Millán Astray, a man thirteen years older than himself and about to be promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. Renowned for his manic bravery and consequent serious injuries, Millán explained to Franco his ideas for creating special units of volunteers for Africa along the lines of the French Foreign Legion. Franco was excited by their discussions and impressed Millán Astray as a possible future collaborator.75
Franco returned to garrison duty in Oviedo where he remained throughout 1919 and for most of 1920. During that time, Millán Astray had presented his ideas to the then Minister of War, General Tovar. In his turn, Tovar had passed them on to the General Staff and Millán was sent to Algeria to observe the structure and tactics of the French Foreign Legion. After he returned, a royal order was published approving the principle of a foreign volunteer unit. Tovar was then replaced by General Villalba Riquelme who shelved the idea pending the more thorough-going reorganization of the African Army then being contemplated. In May 1920, Villalba was in turn replaced by the Vizconde de Eza who happened to hear Millán Astray lecture on the subject of the new unit at the Círculo Militar in Madrid. Eza was sufficiently convinced to authorize its recruitment.
In June 1920, Millán met Franco again in Madrid to offer him the job of second-in-command of the Spanish Legion. At first, given his now flourishing relationship with Carmen and the fact that Morocco seemed, for the moment at least, to be as quiet as mainland Spain, he was not particularly excited by the offer.76 However, after a brief hesitation, and faced with the prospect of kicking his heels interminably in Oviedo, he accepted. It was to be the beginning of a difficult period for Carmen Polo which was to show that she could match her husband in patience and determination. Speaking about the experience eight years later, she said ‘I had always dreamed that love would be an existence lit up by joy and laughter; but it brought me nothing but sadness and tears. The first tears that I shed as a woman were for him. When we were engaged, he had to leave me to go to Africa to organize the first bandera of the Legion. You can imagine my constant anxiety and unease, terribly intensified on the days that the newspapers talked about operations in Morocco or when his letters were delayed more than usual.’77
The Legion was formally established on 31 August 1920 under the name Tercio de Extranjeros (Tercio, or third, was the name used in the sixteenth century for regiments in the Army of Flanders which had been composed of three groups, pikemen, crossbowmen and arquebusiers). At its inception, it also had three banderas, (‘colours’ or ‘flags’) or battalions. Millán Astray disliked the name Tercio and always insisted on calling the new force ‘the Legion’, a name Franco also favoured. In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, there had been no problem recruiting volunteers. On 27 September 1920, Franco was named commander of its primera bandera (first battalion). Putting aside his plans for a life with Carmen Polo, he set off on the Algeciras ferry on 10 October 1920, accompanied by the first two hundred mercenaries, a motley band of desperados, misfits and outcasts, some tough and ruthless, others simply pathetic. They were hard cases, ranging from common criminals, via foreign First World War veterans who had been unable to adjust to peacetime, to the gunmen (pistoleros) who fought in the social war then tearing Barcelona apart. This short, slight, pallid twenty-eight year-old major, with his high-pitched voice, seemed poorly fitted to be able to command such a crew.
Millán Astray was obsessed with death and offered his new recruits little more than the chance to fight and die. The romantic notion that the Legion would offer its outcast recruits redemption through sacrifice, discipline, hardship, violence and death was held dear by both Millán and Franco throughout their lives. It underlies Franco’s diary of its first two years, Diario de una bandera, a curious mixture of sentimentalised Beau Geste-style adventure-story romanticism and cold insensitivity in the face of human bestiality. In his speech of welcome to the first recruits, a hysterical Millán told them that, as thieves and murderers, their lives had been at an end before joining the Legion. Inspired by a frenzied and contagious fervour, he offered them a new life but the price to be paid would be their deaths. He called them ‘los novios de la muerte’ (the bridegrooms of death).78 They gave the Legion a mentality of brutal ruthlessness which Franco was to share to the full even though he remained outwardly reserved. Discipline was savage. Men could be shot for desertion and for even minor infractions of discipline.79